Dreams of Reality
by ClockworkDreams
Summary: Kesi was born to be a hell raiser. At fifteen, she's already been arrested four times, drinks and experiments with drugs. The constant delusional stupor she's in often produces images of fairies, goblins, a labyrinth, and a castle where the goblin king lives. So one day, barely conscious, she finally makes the wish and finds out more about her unknown past than she ever imagined.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Don't You Know There's More?**

"That's ridiculous," Jason says.

I smile dreamily, my mind still in that forbidden place, my finger still between the pages of that forbidden book. "Maybe," I say quietly, almost wistfully. "But doesn't everything that's ridiculous at first turn out to be amazing and life changing?"

The joint is pulled from between my fingers, "You've had enough, when you start talking like that."

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I know he's right. I never slip like this. That would be dangerous, foolish. They'd lock me up in the loony bin if they ever figured out that the only part of this that has to do with the high is the part where I'm actually voicing my thoughts.

"I'm out," I grab my pack and stand up, stumbling as the world lurches under me. Maybe the fourth beer was a bad idea. It doesn't sound like much, but when you factor in that I'm a major lightweight and that I've been smoking the past hour that I've been drinking, then it takes a toll on the senses.

I can't go home now, it wouldn't be sensible. I'd only go home like this if I had a death with – oh wait, I do. I giggle, scratching at the latest scar on my arm. Since I only cut it this morning, it's only barely scabbed over.

I trip on something, maybe in the end nothing, and crash hard to the ground, barely managing to keep myself to my hands and knees.

"Goblins…" I say, my voice coming out quiet, choked and maybe even a little pathetic. Am I imagining the tears in my eyes? I hope so. I hope I'm far enough away from the others that they don't see me.

I scream as the headache starts, as my hands start to shake. I fumble in my pack, my stuff falling and scattering everywhere. And even though it only takes seconds, it seems like years and every moment of it is painful and violent. My vision blackens and my breath comes in short hitches. Finally I find my iPod, slam my palm on the play button, and the music blasts out. Even before I managed to get the headphones over my ears, the music started to calm me.

I took the bottle out of my bag and dumped a few pills in my mouth before letting myself lie down in the damp grass. Finally the world started to fade away, fog filling my mind as my body numbs. The images still flicker behind my drooping eyelids, but they're slower this time.

_"Mama! Mama! Look at this!" _

_ "What is that?" _

_ "It's a fairy? And see, there's a goblin. They live in the labyrinth. Well, the fairies live just outside. But see, there, there's the castle where the goblin king lives." _

_ "Kesi, where on earth did you get all this?" _

_ "Mama, don't you know? Don't you know there's more? There's more and I'm going to see it all some day! I wish the goblin king wo-"_

"I wish the goblin king would come and take me away right now…" I whisper, just before slipping away completely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Strange Girl**

Jareth was woken from another dream of his long-lost Sarah – it's a dream he's had enough times that he could relive it with perfect accuracy even in his waking life.

"Dad," Iniko's voice break's through the door, loud and insistent. It comes as no surprise that his son's up at such an odd hour. Sometimes Jareth wondered if that boy ever slept. "Dad, come on, get up! You've got to see this!"

Sighing in frustration, Jareth finally pulls himself out of bed and throws open the door to his room. He's met with a pale and sweating Iniko who's breathing heavily like he's been running.

"Well?" Jareth demands. "What is it?"

"There's someone here, just outside the labyrinth," Iniko says quickly, running a hand through his startlingly red hair. "A girl."

For one irrational moment, the memory of Sarah flashes through Jareth's mind. But then confusion takes over, "Wait, what? How did she get here? Did you bring her?"

"No!" Iniko's snaps, insulted by the idea. "Why would I bring an outsider to the labyrinth? I'm not stupid enough to risk my own life!"

Jareth realizes that he has a point. Iniko knows how dangerous the labyrinth is – not just for anyone who enters it, but for him. But that still left the most important question at hand unanswered. How _did_ the girl get to the labyrinth? And who is she?

"Hold on," Jareth closes his bedroom door so that he could get dressed quickly. He doesn't even bother with his hair or usual make up as he comes rushing back out, passing his Iniko to hurry to his throne room, his son on his heels.

For a moment, Jareth's heart pounds when he looks through the crystal ball and sees the girl who seems to be just waking up, right outside the labyrinth. Under the tree where he first brought Sarah to the labyrinth. And the girl does look _just _like Sarah. For a moment, Jareth thinks that it's her, that it has to be. How could it not be?

But then he remembers that Sarah's human, from the mortal world. It's been so long. Certainly she wouldn't look the same, would she?

"She has a daughter…" Jareth realizes, whispering the thought to himself.

But Iniko's standing close enough to hear, and looks at his father in confusion. After a moment, he gets it. "Sarah."

Her name spoken by his son startles Jareth and causes him to look away from the crystal ball and the girl it shows.

"That was her name, right?" Iniko asks.

"And that is her daughter," Jareth nods.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Waking Dream**

I always wake up twice. The first time, it's to visit my dream world. The labyrinth, the goblin city, sometimes I even make it to the front door of the castle. Never into the castle though, I always wake up before I can get there.

This time though, after my visit to the dream labyrinth, I wake up groggily like I always do. My body moves slowly, feeling like it weighs a thousand pounds almost, as I sit up and rub my eyes. Then I open my eyes, and freeze, my hand still near my face.

"Wait…" I whisper to myself. "This doesn't make sense."

This is the second time I wake up. I should be waking up back in the park, a couple yards from my friends. But instead, I'm back under the tree outside the labyrinth.

"Okay, how many pills did I take?" I wonder, reaching for my bag, thinking that maybe I accidently overdosed and that's why I can't wake up yet. Hell, maybe I'm even dead. If the I've died and gone to the labyrinth, am I in heaven or hell?

I frown, realizing that my bag isn't next to me. My bag's always been next to me before. It was next to last time. Every time. Half the time, I end up dropping it when I pass out, or before, my stuff scattered everywhere, only about half of it in the bag. But then I would wake up outside the labyrinth and it'd be lying beside me or sitting against the tree waiting for me to pick it up and get on with solving the labyrinth.

I push myself to my feet, staggering under my own weight. I'm still drugged, still groggy, still foggy. But still, without my backpack, I make my way down the hill and towards the labyrinth. I've woken up in the past in various parts of the city, sometimes getting as far as the castle door. But I've never woken up _in_ the maze.

So I have to get through it to wake up. And now I'm convinced that I'm losing time. I'm still asleep, and I've been asleep for at least four hours – it's never less than four – and I have to get home before I'm past curfew.

So no big deal. I just have to make it through the maze again. No big deal. Gods know I've done it countless times before. And even though it always has new tricks to it, the turns always changing, the stones always moving, I know it's tricks now and know how to, at the very least, work with them.

I make my way to the labyrinth door, finding Hoggle there at the pond, shooting down fairies with his blow gun thing.

"Having fun?" I ask him. My tongue feels swollen still, and I'm annoyed at still being under the influence of the drug. This is a _dream_, for gods' sakes.

Hoggle jumps, startled, and turns to face me. "Sarah!" he starts towards me.

"Who?" I ask, causing him to stop and look at me in confusion.

"You're not Sarah?"

"No," I shake my head slowly, getting confused myself. Then I roll my eyes, "Come on, Hoggle, you know who I am. I was here just earlier."

"I've never seen you before. But…I swear, you look just like Sarah!"

"So you don't know who I am and I don't know who Sarah is. Well this is a twist. You've never mentioned Sarah before."

"I've never seen you before!" Hoggle protests.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going back into the labyrinth." I wave him off, walking past him and making for the door.

"Wait, no, I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

I remember this conversation from the first time I started dreaming about the labyrinth. "It's dangerous, I know. But I've already got this nailed, Hoggle. _You_ may have suddenly lost all your memories, but I haven't. I know how to handle myself in there now. This isn't like that first time." A

And with that, I push open the door to the labyrinth and step inside.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Hypnotizing**

"No," Iniko starts shaking his head as he and Jareth watch the girl enter the maze. "No, no, she's going in! Stop her!"

But Jareth doesn't hear his son, his mind working too hard to realize that he's all but completely checked out.

She looks exactly like Sarah. Even _Hoggle_ thought it was Sarah. And she acted like she knew Hoggle. But once the dwarf realized that she's not really Sarah, he acted like he had no idea who she was. So which one of them was acting?

He shakes his head. Hoggle couldn't have been acting, he was so confused he could barely speak. Jareth always knows when anyone in this kingdom is lying or trying to hide something. And Hoggle wasn't trying to hide anything. He was just as confused as he seemed.

But there's still the girl. Sarah's doppelganger. She acted like she knew Hoggle. She acted like she had been to the labyrinth before, like she's familiar with it. She thinks the labyrinth will be easy because she's been through it before. Is it possible that maybe this _is_ Sarah after all? Maybe a Sarah with scrambled memories.

So she's been into the labyrinth before, huh? Well then, Jareth decides, I'll simply test just how much she knows. If she makes it to the castle, then I'll know. Then it'll have to be her.

"Dad?" Iniko looks at Jareth nervously. He's never seen the look on his father's face before that he's seeing now, and it's scaring him. It's a dangerous one, filled with madness and hunger. Iniko looks between the crystal ball and his father. The image in the crystal ball shows the human girl walking down the right side of the first passageway. On and on she walks, showing absolutely no sign of being in a hurry and absolutely no impatience.

It really is like she knows what she's doing. She walks through the labyrinth with absolute confidence, without fear. And Iniko finds himself hypnotized by it. Even the goblins, who live in the heart of the labyrinth, know enough about it to fear it.

Maybe it's just that this girl is oblivious. _She thinks it's just a maze_, Iniko tells himself. But then he watches he stop, sidestep, and disappear into the hidden turn.

_No,_ Iniko decides. She knows _exactly _what she's doing.

Iniko looks at his father again, fear filling his heart as he realizes what his father's going to do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Cut in Stone**

I cross my arms and lean sideways against one of the many walls, taking in the part of the labyrinth that waits in front of me. It took me forever to figure out how to get through this part. It changes every time, but the key is being able to mark where I've been and which way I was going. I've tried countless different ways in the past, but only recently, within the last three or four tries, figured out a way that the goblin's can't change where my marks. Well, they probably can, they just can't do it in enough time to be able to hide it from me. I've even caught them in the process of turning one of my marks before.

So I take out my pocket knife, the only thing that I have with me since I somehow lost my backpack, and flip it open as I push myself away from the wall. I plan on going to the left first, but before I do that, I dig the tip of my pocket knife into the stone wall.

I hold my breath as I cut in the first line, praying that my pocket knife didn't break under the pressure of being used to mark stone. But, thankfully, it holds up as I make my first arrow, then my second, then my third. At my fourth, it finally breaks halfway through the arrow.

"Shit," I swear under my breath, throwing down the broken handle of the knife. The broken blade lies at my feet as I straighten my back, then bend backwards to crack it. I only see the two doors and its four guards – if you could really call them guards – when I bend all the way backwards so that my hands are on the cobblestone behind my feet.

"Ah, there you guys are," I say, unsurprised to find them when I know for a fact they were not there before. I push away from the ground to straighten up again, turning to face them. "I think you guys took longer this time."

"What is she talking about?" the one on the top left asks the one on the top right.

"I don't know!" the top-right one says, then looks down at the bottom right, "Do you know?"

"What, you guys don't remember me either?" I shake my head in amazement and confusion. First Hoggle, now this lot. What's wrong with these guys? Is _everyone_ going to be like this? Because if that's the case, then this is going to make going through the labyrinth flat out annoying.

"Are we supposed to remember her?" the door guards start asking each other, and conferring as they always do.

"Okay!" I finally stop them, getting impatient. "You can work out whether or not you know me _after_ I go through the door."

"But which door will you go through? You see…"

"Step aside," I approach the left door. "I'm going through here."

The door guards look at each other, unsure what to do. I wait for another minute as they confer again. "Well, I suppose," the top left guard says as the two shuffle to the side. Impatient, I push them aside and shove open the door myself. I don't drop down to the man-hand filled hole like I did the first two times I came to the labyrinth – of course, before he hands had even caught me, I'd realized what an idiot I'd been for picking the same door twice.

I let the door fall shut behind me as I walk forward, deeper into the labyrinth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Labyrinth Scars**

Iniko hisses in pain, feeling the scratches appearing on his body. He doesn't have to, because he already knows what he'll find – he's been with his father, watching the girl make her way confidently through the labyrinth, for the past hour and a half – but he lifts up the hem of his loose white shirt anyway.

Tattooed all over Iniko's chest and back, even up his neck and covering the upper right half of his face, is a map of the labyrinth. It's how he always knows what's going on in the labyrinth. Every time a stone is thrown, every time that a building in the city crumbles, every time that some poor unfortunate soul falls into the Bog of Eternal Stench, it affects him too.

So when this girl, this Sarah doppleganger, uses her pocket knife to cut into the stones to help her remember her way, she unknowingly cuts into the skin of the prince of the goblin city.

A few little cuts doesn't matter to Iniko. They hurt at least three times what normal cuts would, but he's grown so used to the pain that the labyrinth brings him daily that it means nothing anymore. But the those who live in and outside the labyrinth know not to mess with the labyrinth, as long as they can help it. They don't know why exactly, threats to their lives ensured that they never questioned why and never challenged the law that was established sixteen years ago.

So while there have always been accidents and natural disasters, Iniko was always relatively safe because nothing truly bad would ever happen if any of the goblins, dwarves, fairies, or anything, valued their lives. And they did value their lives very much.

This girl didn't know anything though. She may know the labyrinth's paths and maybe even a few of its tricks, but she obviously didn't know the penalty for damaging anything – to herself.

"Oh, no, no, no," Jareth shakes his head, his gaze unwavering from the crystal ball. Iniko isn't even sure Jareth's blinked this entire time. _Is he at least breathing?_ "That foolish girl. She can't cut the stones like that without repercussions."

Iniko doesn't protest, because his father's exactly right. This girl may be an outsider, but if she keeps going with complete oblivion, she could kill Iniko and never even realized it.

But as Jareth sends in the first test, and Iniko's pain grows, the sixteen year old boy realizes that simply punishing this girl isn't going to work. Not at all. Because she won't accept being punished lying down. She's going to fight whatever Jareth throws at her, and she's going to fight it with everything she has in her.

Jareth's oblivious to it, too wrapped up in the girl herself, too busy trying to figure out if it's Sarah with failing memories, or someone else, to hear as the heavy doors to the throne room slam to a shut behind Iniko.

Passing goblin servants who stare in confusion and wonder, completely ignoring them and knowing damn well that his father's not going to like what he's about to do, Iniko flees from the palace and plunges into the labyrinth.


End file.
